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URBAN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT – BLOCK V

Community Participation in Urban Community DevelopmentImportance of ParticipationMethods for community participation

Social Work Intervention in Urban Community DevelopmentConscientizationCommunity OrganizingCommunity MobilizationConflict resolutionAdvocacyCapacity building

Managing Urban Community DevelopmentProject Cycle ManagementHuman resource developmentMonitoring and Evaluation

The term community participation is used so widely that its meaning is often unclear. To understand community participation, it is useful to look at the two words separately. The term community is commonly used to refer to people grouped on the basis of geography and/or common interest, identity or interaction. It can thus be defined as: “a group of people who share an interest, a neighbourhood, or a common set of circumstances. They may, or may not, acknowledge membership of a particular community”.

Different people tend to understand the concept of community differently – and this can influence community participation in practice. Thus, a politician may focus on communities defined by political constituencies; an urban planner may focus on communities defined by agreed geographical boundaries; a public health physician may focus on communities of risk groups; and a member of the public may focus on a community or communities of which he or she feels to be a part – whether defined by the local neighbourhood, shared use of facilities or affinity with a particular population group.

The Collins dictionary defines participate as: “to take part, be or become actively involved, or share (in)”. In practice, the term is used very broadly and there can be many different degrees of participation, as discussed below.

The term community participation thus implies a process by which people are enabled to become actively and genuinely involved in defining the issues of concern to them, in making decisions about factors that affect their lives, in formulating and implementing policies, in planning, developing and delivering services and in taking action to achieve change.

Consultation often forms an integral part of statutory urban planning processes and involves people being referred to for information and asked their opinions. Although this implies that communities’ views may be taken into consideration, it has not generally meant that people are actively engaged in the decision-making process. Involvement is a term often used synonymously with participation. It implies being included as a necessary part of something.

Importance of Participation

The voices of communities and professionals provide a convincing argument for giving priority to community participation as an active two-way process that may be initiated and sustained both by individuals and communities and by local and health authorities and other local organizations. Community participation can increase democracy, empower people, mobilize resources and energy, develop holistic and integrated approaches, achieve better decisions and more effective services and ensure the ownership and sustainability of programmes.

Increasing democracy. Community participation in decision-making, planning and action is a human right. An increasing number of citizens are disillusioned with government and want to see more participatory approaches to democracy. Recognition is growing that community participation must be a key element of new approaches to governance.

Empowering people. The actual process of participation can inherently empower individuals and communities to understand their own situations and to gain increased control over the factors affecting their lives. This process can, in turn, enhance people’s sense of wellbeing and quality of life.

Mobilizing resources and energy. Communities have a wealth of untapped resources and energy that can be harnessed and mobilized through community participation, using a range of practical techniques that can engage people.

Developing holistic and integrated approaches. Ordinary people do not tend to compartmentalize their thinking in the way that many professionals have been trained to do. They can thus make a valuable contribution to the formulation of holistic and integrated cross-cutting approaches that can meaningfully address the complex issues being faced by towns and cities throughout Europe.

Achieving better decisions and more effective services. Involving people in identifying needs, planning and taking action can result in better and more creative decisions being taken and more responsive and appropriate services being provided.

Ensuring the ownership and sustainability of programmes. Community participation is essential if interventions and programmes aimed at promoting health, wellbeing, quality of life and environmental protection are to be widely owned and sustainable.

Methods for community participation

Participatory approaches are flexible, process-oriented methodologies. They combine guiding principles, core concepts and sets of interactive techniques which have been developed to better realize high levels of community participation in official development programmes and, more importantly, to give local people greater control over the process of development. Participation, as a principle, is now commonly accepted to be an important component of successful development programmes. Participatory approaches as described here are intended to facilitate higher levels of participation in which local people maintain significant control over the development process. The use of such approaches has, in general, been initiated by development practitioners and agencies who have become concerned that much of development dialogue and decision-making is designed by, and limited to, professionals. Their objective is to facilitate the integration of local people into such debates and, in some cases, to enhance community control of resource allocation and planning processes. They are aimed at:

Increase awareness and understanding about the key actors and groups at the local level. Improve the quality and quantity of information about local conditions. Identify viable local development options Mobilize local and external resources for such options Enable local people to identify constraints, set priorities and take action Strengthen the self-confidence and capacities of local organizations Develop and support mechanisms to resolve local conflicts

Given below are some of the important participatory methods used in urban community development.

Resource mapping

Resource maps can help to depict the relationships between households of different socio-economic groups and resources; facilitate community identification of problems and solutions on the basis of this visual presentation; and illustrate access to and control of resources within the community. Firstly, the slum is mapped onto the ground, a wall or a chart. This is done separately with men’s, women’s and/or mixed groups in order to achieve different perspectives. Secondly, community resources are identified together with their access, management and control. Such resources may include balwadis (preschools),community centres, pipes, drainage, electricity, paved roads and health services. The location of other common resources is also highlighted as well as the residence of neighbourhood committee members.Mapping can also be used to learn many other things about the community such as:

The range of caste, religious and language groups within the settlement Occupations of men and women, girls and boys Links with villages Income levels Education levels Employment and skills Health issues such as the use of permanent and temporary contraception

Women-headed households, widowed women, deserted wives Violence against women Access to income, resources and services

The resource map can lead to discussions on the lack of services, drainage, overcrowding, cramped living conditions, disposal of solid and liquid waste, or lack of safe and adequate water supply. Similarly it is an extremely useful tool for identifying and discussing issues which specifically affect women, such as pressures on women-headed households, women’s enterprises, access to income resources, credit and services, and economic, social and cultural pressures on girls and women.

Seasonal calendars and activity schedulesThese can help to identify seasonally occurring events and constraints (e.g. drinking water availability, drainage blocks, labour availability, income, food intake, illness etc.). They are also useful for learning about men and women’s workloads in different seasons and relationships to factors such as income, foodintake and sickness. The seasonal calendar can also be used to work out possible engineering, health and community development solutions. The months of the year are marked on the ground using stones or other counters. Events are marked by using locally available seeds, stones, sticks, flowers and leaves. This can be done with single -sex, mixed or interest-specific groups.

A similar tool is the daily activity schedule which identifies household responsibilities on an hourly basis and can highlight gender divisions of labour. The seasonal calendar and daily activity schedule exercise can also reveal specific problems such as the provision of appropriately timed childcare facilities.

Focus group discussionsSmall group discussions held with a facilitator can explore issues in further depth. Keeping groups small helps to ensure that everybody participates in the discussion. For example, meetings could be held with occupational groups such as potters, dhobis, beedi (tobacco) workers and rag pickers in order to provide each with the opportunity to express their specific occupational concerns in relation to particular issues such as space requirements, water supply and rubbish disposal. Similar group meetings can be arranged by gender, age group and language group.

Wealth and well-being rankingWealth ranking identifies the different socio-economic characteristics of households in a given slum area. There are a number of approaches. Using the resource map, household names can be listed on cards and community representatives encouraged to decide their own criteria for ranking households by wealth and well-being into four or five groups. Alternatively, all households in a given slum are ranked from first to last according to their relative wealth. Different colours could also be used on the resource map itself to mark different levels of well-being. Criteria for assessing well-being may include the presence of able-bodied adult men (without ‘vices’); presence of women providing supplementary household income; school attendance; debt; health problems.

Trend analysesTrend analyses highlight changes in a community over time. By talking to old people in the slum, changes in factors such as education, employment, income, access to credit, drinking water, drainage, infrastructure, housing, population, health practices and social customs can be marked on the ground using locally available materials. The period over which factors are discussed is normally 20-40 years depending on the age of the informants. We have found this very useful in many slum areas as a way of learning about pressure for space and resources.

Venn diagramsThe aims of Venn diagramming techniques are to learn about the relationship between the community and government departments, or relationships between individuals within the community; to raise awareness amongst different informants about their access to resources and the presence of social restrictions and to illustrate the differing perceptions of different informants. Circles of various sizes are cut out and given to participants, who first choose a circle to represent their community and then other circles to indicate the significance or scope of other important people and institutions. The size of the circles and the distance between circles show the perceived relationship between the community and theindividuals/institutions. The use of this technique has been particularly helpful for understanding how access to resources and preferences for services differ between informants. Venn diagramming alsohelps to identify the existing relationship between community development staff and various informants.

Matrix rankingMatrices have a wide variety of applications, but one use is to help evaluate various development programmes in terms of their success in addressing the practical and strategic needs of men and women.The matrix is drawn on the ground using locally available materials. Two factors, for example disease and health practice, can be related together. The matrix can be used for discussion and planning purposes - for example in designing an appropriate income generation programme, discussing healthy food practices, ecologically sound fuel usage or sustainable health practices.

Social Work Intervention in Urban Community Development

Conscientization

Conscientization or creating critical consciousness is a method derived from Paulo Friere’s experiences of teaching illiterate peasants to read while at the same time teaching them to “read the political and social situation in which they found themselves.” This method stressed the relationship of equality and mutual respect between group members (“learners-teachers”) and the facilitators (“teacher-learners”). The facilitators engaged the people in a problem-posing dialogue designed to assist them to elucidate the root causes of the problems they identified. Working in small groups, the people were assisted in

exploring the interconnections between situations and to devise action plans, based on critical reflection, to help transform those situations. The levels of awareness of community development workers reflect their responses to the community situations and the attitudes and actions towards the situation. Thus, the type of assistance and their responses to poverty are dependent on the level of awareness.

The significance of Freire’s method for community organizing lies in providing an effective methodological refinement through problem-posing dialogue and on the understanding of the root causes of problems and issues being addressed.

Freire's literacy method is founded on the notions of conscientization and dialogue. It involves teaching adults how to read and write in relation to the awakening of their consciousness about their social reality. Conscientization is a process of developing consciousness, but consciousness that is understood to have the power to transform reality". It is an 'awakening of consciousness', a change of mentality Involving an accurate, realistic awareness of one's locus In nature and society; the capacity to analyze critically its causes and consequences, comparing It with other situations and possibilities; and action of a logical sort aimed at transformation. Psychologically It entails an awareness of one's dignity.

Conscientlzation, therefore, leads to people organizing themselves to take action so as to change their social realities. The concept of conscientlzation has attracted those who believe in humanistic implications for the participation of the masses and in the necessity of a rapid restructuring of society. It rests on value assumptions of equality of all people, their right to knowledge and culture, and their right to criticise their situation and act upon it. It also implies having a faith in the capacity of all people, including the illiterate, to engage in critical dialogue. Dialogue is the means of achieving conscientlzation. Conscientlzation requires that an individual change his or her attitudes, perception or beliefs. In other words, individuals must not accept that social reality cannot be questioned and changed.

Freire believed that once a person perceived and understood a challenge and recognised the possibilities of a response, that person will act and the nature of his or her action will correspond to the nature of his or her understanding. Hence, critical understanding of situations leads to critical action. Freire's literacy method offered the illiterate people the means by which they could replace their passive perception of their reality by that which was critical so that they could do something about those situations. Freire felt that before teaching the illiterate adult to read, he or she should be helped to overcome his or her passive understanding and develop an increasing critical understanding of his or her reality. Freire proposed that such conscientization could be achieved through an active dialogical and critical pedagogy, changing the learning content so that it comes from the learner's experiences or concrete social realities, and the use of problem codification. He argued that to acquire literacy was more than just being mechanically competent in reading and writing skills but also to be competent in these skills in terms of consciousness. Hence, the educator's role is to enter into dialogue with the illiterate about concrete situations and give him or her the means with which he or she can teach himself or herself to read and write. This kind of teaching is not imposed from the top but takes place in

a shared investigation or in a problem-raising situation between educator and educatee. The emphasis is on the critical analysis and the creativity of the educatee in order to discourage passive behaviour of the educatee or learners.

Community Organizing

Community organizing is a long-term approach where the people affected by an issue are supported in identifying problems and taking action to achieve solutions. The organizer challenges those he or she works with to change the way things are—it is a means of achieving social change through collective action by changing the balance of power. The tactics and strategies employed by the organizer are similar to the processes of leadership including timing the issue, deliberate planning, getting the attention of the populace, framing the issue in terms of the desired solution, and shaping the terms of the decision-making process.

Community organizing helps to bring out many voices to add collective power and strength to an issue. Community organizing is a key part of an overall strategy to make changes in a community that are widely felt, and that reflect the wishes of the people who are directly affected by alcohol-related community problems. This requires the organizer to not only listen and be responsive to the community, but also to help community residents develop the skills necessary to address their own issues in an ongoing way.At the heart of community organizing are inclusion, ownership, relationship building and leadership development.

Community organizing looks at collective solutions — large numbers of people who engage in solutions that impact even more people. These people usually live in the same neighborhood, town or block. Many traditional agency responses look at individual solutions. Agencies tend to focus on the individual as a means to solve public health problems.

Effective community organizing involves the following process:Assess the community: It's extremely important to know the community that one will be working in and the history of the issue one will address. Allow two to three months to become familiar with the community, its history, make-up, demographics, geography and political leadership. Continue to learn about the community by going and interacting with individuals. This will help in learning about the concerns of the community and develop personal relationships. Develop an action plan: Work with the team to develop an Action Plan. What problems has the group identified? What policies would address that problem? What is the decision-making body one needs to impact? What other steps will the team need to take to change policy? Break the work down into manageable steps and tasks. Hold a meeting to discuss plan of action and include a timeline for when things will happen and identify who is responsible. It should be realistic, feasible, and flexible. Issues for an action team that works against alcohol addiction might include:

Alcohol billboards near school Easy for youth to get alcohol at a community festival Local store sells to youth

Youth-targeted alcohol displays at local market Abandoned building in area is a hangout where youth drink

Mobilize to action: Building support base is a necessary part of Action Plan. While the leadership group will guide work, more people are needed to enact or change policy. Tasks one has to consider:

• Identify potential supporters by going door-to-door• Build a base of support in the community• Determine constituents and likely allies• Contact constituents and meet with key members• Make presentations• Identify elected officials who you think will be supportive• Solicit advice of supportive politicians for more political contacts• Ask people to get involved — give them specific tasks

Once the group has identified its policy goals the responsibility of the organizer is to keep the momentum of the group moving forward. To do this one should:

• Break large jobs into small tasks • Get and keep your team members engaged, informed, involved, and in the spotlight• Be responsive and reliable — get people what they need to complete their tasks• Keep group focused and on track• Don't let opponents get your group off message or task

Implement: Once the team manages to influence a policy or achieve a goal, the group will need to decide how it maintains the change and ensures that the desired results are achieved. For example, policy changes cannot be successful at reducing youth access to alcohol if those policies don't include enforcement provisions. After a policy is passed, the group will want to be sure that it is enforced and accomplishes what was intended. Likewise, the group will have to decide what its future will be once goal is attained. Evaluate: It is important to carefully review progress during the campaign to ensure staying on track, as well as to evaluate the campaign after it has ended to see what went right or wrong and learn lessons for the future. During the campaign, make sure you are continuing to make progress toward your goals. Check up on the process, to make sure the group is effectively working together. Examples of evaluation questions to ask leaders and other stakeholders in your campaign might include:

• Is the campaign making a difference? How? • Are we making progress toward our goal?• What factors are most important in achieving the goals of the campaign?• What are the biggest challenges or obstacles for the campaign? After the action plan has been implemented and the campaign is "over," evaluate: • What has been accomplished?• What still needs to be done?• What was done well?• What could have been done better?

Community Mobilization

Community mobilization engages all sectors of the population in a community-wide effort to address a health, social, or environmental issue. It brings together policy makers and opinion leaders, local, state, and federal governments, professional groups, religious groups, businesses, and individual community members. Community mobilization empowers individuals and groups to take some kind of action to facilitate change.

Part of the process includes mobilizing necessary resources, disseminating information, generating support, and fostering cooperation across public and private sectors in the community. Anyone can initiate a community mobilization effort — for example in an AIDS prevention programme, the STD staff of local or state health departments, CBOs, or concerned physicians and other health professionals. All it takes is a person or a group to start the process and bring others into it.

The most significant benefit from community mobilization is doing something to help address an issue impacting their community to save valuable resources. By getting involved, community- and faith-based organizations, health care professionals, and policy makers will jointly take actions that should result in the elimination of problems in their community. Community mobilization can position your organization as a leader in the community, possibly bringing in new resources. It can infuse new energy into an issue through community buy-in and support. Expand the base of community support for an issue or organization. Help a community overcome denial of a health issue. Promote local ownership and decision-making about a health issue. Encourage collaboration between individuals and organizations. Limit competition and redundancy of services and outreach efforts. Provide a focus for prevention planning and implementation efforts. Create public presence and pressure to change laws, polices, and practices — progress that could not be made by just one individual or organization. Bring new community volunteers together (because of increased visibility). Increase cross-sector collaboration and shared resources. Increase access to funding opportunities for organizations and promote long-term, organizational commitment to social and health-related issues.

1 Conducting a Community Assessment. You will need to conduct a Community Assessment to learn where your community currently stands in regard to syphilis elimination. (Who is currently involved, what has been accomplished, and what has not happened, opportunities, barriers, gaps, etc.)

2 Involving the right people. Do not try to conduct a community-wide campaign just through one of your department. You will want to form a community coalition of health professionals, CBOs and FBOs (and their leaders), community activists and others who have an interest in the issue. Make sure that you encourage open communication.

3 Selecting a strong leader.

Appropriate leadership is key to the success of your community mobilization effort. Whether it is a person in the health department or a member of your community coalition, this leader needs to be creative and have the ability to bring together people who have different perspectives and vested interests to support the coalition’s vision. This leader needs to become an agent of change who is passionate about the issue and able to organize members of your coalition and its target audiences into change agents.

4 Defining goals and strategies. Your goals help to define what must be accomplished to achieve your vision. Strategies identify the actions you will take to meet your goals. Set goals that you think can be achieved and choose strategies that you think can be implemented with the resources (funding, manpower, equipment) you have or believe you can obtain.

5 Developing ways to regularly measure progress. Creating change takes time. Tracking your achievements will help you maintain the momentum necessary for success. Early in your mobilization planning process, identify your short- and long-term goals, as well as how and when you will measure when you have achieved those goals.

Conflict Resolution

Conflict means an adversarial relationship or a disagreement between two or more persons, between groups, regions or even nation emanating from different perceptions and interests. Such conflict may be intra-personal as result of internal disagreement within a person. When one speaks of a conflict, it is normally taken to mean chaos, wars or mutual suspicion or strained relations, competition, hatred and many other associated ills. It is incorrect to normally regard conflict as something very destructive which deserves avoidance or denouncing.

In most cases conflict is as a result of the following:

- Different perception;- Dierent behaviors or attitudes;- Poor distribution of national resources;- Lack of basic human needs or their frustration;- Different interests;- Ideological differences based on religion or political parties.

Types of conflict

Disputes. This is a type of conflict normally encountered on a daily basis. It is usually easy to resolve this type of conflict. Examples include; not respecting time and appointments, having an argument with someone, late coming without notifying ones superior, etc. This type of conflict if not responded it can lead to social discord.

Underlying conflict. This sort of conflict happens when, one continues to push the problem under the carpet, avoiding or post pining it to the extent that it only requires an enabling event or a spark off or explode the conflict into war.

Deep rooted conflictThis type of conflict is indeed fundamental. It is based on perception and religious or ethnic beliefs. It is hard to handle or manage. Some people are even prepared to sacrifice their lives for what they consider so dear to themselves.

Levels of conflict

Intrapersonal conflict: The type of conflict that occur within a person. Examples : choice of partner, moral question or a decision to abandon a bad practice, use of time, taking a decision etc.

Interpersonal Conflict: Conflict between two or more persons over an issue.

Intragroup conflict: An example is conflict between people within the same group.

Intergroup conflict: One might cite conflicts between organizations, families, or institutions.

Intranational conflict: This means an internal conflict between small groups within the country.

International Conflict: This is conflict between two or more nations. This could be for ideological reasons, territorial claims, natural resources or other interests.

Different styles of behavior or Responses to conflict

Avoidance This happens when a person shuns away responsibility. He/she recognizes the problem, but doesn't make any effort to solve it. This attitude is always based on the understanding that conflict is always negative, thinking that trying to extricate from it may land a person into more trouble. It looks as if one has swept the problem under the carpet, postponing it due to fear. This simply implies covering up something one would like to see yet this doesn't solve the problem either. The outcome of such behavior response in face of the conflict is that, such conflict avoided will always re-surface due to that avoidance attitude which has the potential to result in poor response. Such conflict may turn out to be a boomerang or destroy the entire society.

Collaboration This method involves mutual discussion and dialogue in order to arrive at a final decision. This requires active listening and co-operation of the other party in the conflict in finding a solution. It also requires participation and mutual understanding of both parties. When both parties are deeply convinced of their common needs or have relatively the same bargaining power.

Competition This usually happens when one party feels dominant over the other and wishes to monopolize, control and out compete the other. One party doesn't wish to pay any attention to the other and only defends his/her position. This method uses force to dominate and suppress the other party. It is being egocentric and selfish, a kind of win / lose aspect. Competition is usually used when: When negotiations and peaceful talks have hit a deadlock or one of the parties fails to accommodate the others views. It also happens when one party is unwilling to give up some interests and is always positional on whatever he wants. This kind of behavior has always got negative consequences on the social relations of the concerned parties.

Advocacy

Advocacy can be called as the act of inducing and persuading the democratic agencies to resolve various social issues. Advocacy is a Latin term. The word ‘Ad’ means ‘in favour of’ and ‘Voca’ is to speak.... hence, the meaning of the word ‘advocacy’ is to speak in favour of someone. The lawyers are also called advocates, as they stand in favour of a side or a party. In other words, advocacy is to speak for, or support someone. Advocacy is essential for helping the insignificant social elements, institutions, communities and neglected public in acquiring their rights and in making the concerned authorities aware of their issues. E.g. inadequate ration supply, diseases, especially contagious diseases etc. Advocacy informs the common people in such situations about the concerned authorities and where and how to approach them. Such an organized and collective effort is advocacy. Every nation has always tried to constitute the government policies in favour of the poor and neglected ones.

The Aims of advocacy:

To bring the attention of the policy-makers to the issues of the oppressed ones in the society. To influence the making and implementation those of policies. To apprise the common man about the details of various policies, schemes, programmes for social

welfare and the existing systems. To enhance the skills and outlook for proper execution of policies. To create a ‘people-oriented’ government system. To create more and more social advocates from the civil society.

The first stage is the identification of an issue for policy action. This stage is also referred to as agenda setting. There are an unlimited number of problems which need attention, but not all can get a place on the action agenda. Advocates decide which problem to address and attempt to get the target institution to recognize that the problem needs action.

Generally, the second stage, solution formulation, follows rapidly. Advocates and other key actors propose solutions to the problem and select one that is politically, economically, and socially feasible.

The third stage, building the political will to act on the problem and its solution, is the centerpiece of advocacy. Actions during this stage include coalition building, meeting with decision makers, awareness building and delivering effective messages.

The fourth stage, policy action, takes place when a problem is recognized, its solution is accepted and there is political will to act, all at the same time. This overlap is usually a short window of opportunity which advocates must seize. An understanding of the decision-making process and a solid advocacy strategy will increase the likelihood of creating windows of opportunity for action.

The final stage, evaluation, is often not reached, though it is important. Good advocates assess the effectiveness of their past efforts and set new goals based on their experience. Advocates and the institution that adopts the policy change should periodically evaluate the effectiveness of that change.

Capacity Building

Community capacity can be seen as the capacity of the people in communities to participate in actions based on community interests, both as individuals and through groups, organisations and networks. It is not primarily about their ability to act in their personal, family or employers’ interest, which are catered for in other spheres. However, many of the same skills are involved, and people who are active in the community invariably benefit in other ways as well.The actions people and groups take can broadly be described as Community Activity. This can be divided into three types of activity:

• Action to build social capital: building relationships, trust, shared norms and networks. It involves people taking part in community initiatives, groups and organisations, and those groups communicating with the wider population as volunteers, members and participants.

• Delivering services: these can either be autonomous services provided by communities, or specialist services provided by community or voluntary groups, controlled by contracts or service level agreements with public agencies.

• Involvement in governance: representing the interests of all local people or of particular groups in influencing decisions that affect the quality of local life.

Community capacity building is defined as: Activities, resources and support that strengthen the skills and abilities of people and community groups to take effective action and leading roles in the development oftheir communities. It is helpful to see community capacity building as three main types of activity:

• Developing skills - learning and training opportunities for individuals and groups, and sharing through networks and mutual support, to develop skills, knowledge and confidence.

• Developing structures – developing the organisational structures and strengths of community groups, communities of interest and networks.• Developing support – developing the availability of practical support to enable the development of skills and structures.

Community capacity building is normally undertaken to achieve a specific purpose, whereas the community development process provides the wider context. The key purpose of community development work is ‘collectively to bring about social change.

Nine domains are identified on capacity building. These are areas where there are opportunities for individuals and groups to mobilize themselves for greater control over their lives. Considering these domains encourages strategic planning, implementation and evaluation of programmes:

1. Improves stakeholder participation; 2. Increases problem assessment capacities; 3. Develops local leadership; 4. Builds empowering organizational structures; 5. Improves resource mobilization; 6. Strengthens links to other organisations and people; 7. Enhances stakeholder ability to "ask why";8. Increases stakeholder control over programme management; 9. Creates an equitable relationship with outside agents.

The nine domains represent the organizational influences on the community's capacity. They link the inter-personal elements of the community with the programme's political, socio-cultural and economic context.

Implementing the Capacity Building approach

Capacity building is always a process. The approach is not a substitute for other elements of programme planning such as setting goals or objectives, but helps programme staff ask themselves at all stages whether the programme has helped to increase community capacity.

A four phases guide can be followed while implementation capacity building of communities:

Phase 1: Preparation A period of observation and discussion before assessing community capacity will allow adapting the approach to the programme participants' social and cultural requirements. For example the use of a working definition of community capacity can provide all participants with a mutual understanding of the programme. The nine operational domains can be altered at this stage if necessary.

Phase 2: Assessments

The participants assess their community’s capacity using participatory appraisal techniques, which helps to describe different levels of capacity. This throws light on each of the domains mentioned above and the stage at which the community’s lie vis-à-vis these domains. The participants during the PRA closely describe their community's present situation. In this way the participants make their own assessment for each domain by comparing their experiences and opinions.

The participants record the reasons for assessing each domain. This helps when other people make an assessment later on and also provides some observable criteria for the selection. This helps in generating the baseline about the existing resources, skills and knowledge and later on helps in assessing the success of the capacity building component of the programme.

Phase 3 Developing a strategic plan for community capacity

The assessment must be transformed into action in order to build capacity. This is achieved through strategic planning in each of the identified and prioritized domains, which consists of: discussing how to improve the present situation; developing a strategy to improve the present situation; and identifying what resources are needed. Activities are designed to guide participants through these steps.

Phase 4 Follow-up and re-assessments

The approach uses a simplified version of logical framework project planning. The participants must meet every three to six months to review their assessment and strategic plan for building community capacity.

What are areas in which capacity building is done?

The capacity building of communities increase the access of the communities to:

• Skills• Information• Resources – natural, financial and intellectual• Knowledge• Technology• Linkages

What are tools that can be used for Capacity Building?

The tools that can be used for capacity building are:

• Intensive trainings• Focus group workshops, seminars, discussions• Exposure and exchange visits to successful projects

PROJECT PLANING AND IMPLEMENTATION

Projects represent the commitment of human and physical resources to produce specific outputs in a given time and budget framework. Projects vary in scale, purpose and duration. They may be initiated within a community, requiring modest inputs and producing tangible outputs within a relatively short timeframe. At the other extreme, projects may require substantial financial resources and only generate benefits in the long term. For example, the former could be an adult literacy project in a village; the latter may be the provision of universal primary education for all children of school age in a country. Whilst the former needs one trainer and a few teaching materials, the latter requires numerous schools, teachers, equipment and administration. Projects may stand-alone or be integrated into a programme, with several projects contributing to one overall goal. Despite the difference in scale and nature of projects, there are aspects of sound project management that are universal.

The phases of the project cycle can be described as follows:

During the Programming phase, the situation at national and sectoral level is analysed to identify problems, constraints and opportunities which development cooperation could address. This involves a review of socio-economic indicators, and of national and donor priorities. The purpose is to identify and agree the main objectives and sectoral priorities for development cooperation, and thus to provide a relevant and feasible programming framework within which projects can be identified and prepared. For each of these priorities strategies will be formulated that take account of the lessons of past experience.

Á During the Identification phase, ideas for projects and other development actions are identified and screened for further study. This involves consultation with the intended beneficiaries of each action, an analysis of the problems they face, and the identification of options to address these problems. A decision can then be made on the relevance of each project idea (both to the intended beneficiaries and to the programming framework), and on which ideas should be further studied during the Formulation phase.

 During the Formulation phase, relevant project ideas are developed into operational project plans. Beneficiaries and other stakeholders participate in the detailed specification of the project idea that is then assessed for its feasibility (whether it is likely to succeed) and sustainability (whether it is likely to generate longterm benefits for the beneficiaries). On the basis of this assessment, a decision is made on whether to draw up a formal project proposal and seek funding for the project.

à During the Financing phase, project proposals are examined by the funding agency, and a decision is taken on whether to fund the project. The funding agency and partner country agree the modalities of implementation and formalise these in a legal document which sets out the arrangements by which the project will be funded and implemented.

Ä During the Implementation phase, the project is mobilised and executed. This may require the tendering and award of contracts for technical assistance or works and supplies. During implementation,and in consultation with beneficiaries and stakeholders, project management assesses actual progress against planned progress to determine whether the project is on track towards achieving its objectives. If necessary the project is re-oriented to bring it back on track, or to modify some of its objectives in the light of any significant changes that may have occurred since its formulation.

Å During the Evaluation phase, the funding agency and partner country assess the project to identify what has been achieved, and to identify lessons that have been learned. Evaluation findings are used to improve the design of future projects or programmes. Although in the generic cycle the evaluation phase comes after implementation, it is common practice also to conduct a mid-term evaluation during implementation, to identify lessons that can be applied during the remaining life of the project.

The cycle represents a continuous process in which each stage provides the foundation for the next. For example, the information generated during project identification (Stage I) provides the basis for detailed project design (Stage II). Stage III reviews the information generated during the preceding two stages from several perspectives to ensure the project is viable. Stages I to III provide the foundations for a project. If they are sound, the project is more likely to succeed in subsequent stages, in terms of securing funding and competent implementation. However, at any point in the first three stages it may be decided that it is more appropriate not to proceed with the proposed project.

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT

In India, 76 per cent of the total population (around one billion in 2001) resides in rural areas and the majority of them are small and marginal farmers, tenants, landless labourers and rural artisans. The weaker sections of the rural masses are in the grip of the vicious circle of poverty, unemployment and underemployment. They are the capital starved sections of the rural population, having little or no productive assets and their meagre incomes are derived from the casual or irregular employment available in villages. The objective of community development encompasses improved productivity, increased employment and higher incomes as well as minimum acceptable levels of food, clothing, shelter, education and health to the people.

In recent years, the government has initialed many developmental programmes like the IRDP, NREP, RLEGP, TRYSEM, DWACRA, ICDS, etc., all designed and aimed at alleviating rural poverty, but they have met with little success. For developing human resources, it is necessary to bring within the reach of every citizen whatever improves the quality of life: health, education, shelter, unpolluted environment, law and order and a life of dignity without fear, favour and corruption. The biggest challenge of HRD in

India is the adequate provision of these facilities to the massive population residing in the rural and urban communities. Further, it is observed that much stress and attention has been given to improve and expand the 'delivery system', but less attention has been paid to the development of the 'receiving system'.

HRD assumes additional importance in today's rapidly institutionalizing society. Not only the economy, but also other social sectors like education, healthcare, recreation, rural development and social welfare, which were hitherto carried out in an unorganized or informal manner, are increasingly being carried out by larger formal organizations. The emergence of corporate hospitals and the penetration of large corporations into social sectors such as forestry and housing are glaring examples of the widening control of the organized sector over the entire gamut of human activity. The trend has generally brought in greater efficiency in the services provided by these sectors. But the consequences of institutionalization have been the disempowerment of people and that activities that were earlier determined and controlled by the local community have now come to be determined by an abstract entity called the organization. It is in this context that many organizations have switched over from the traditional approach to new interventionist strategies like empowerment of the powerless, strengthening of civil society and sustainable human development. A brief discussion on these newly emerging strategies and their relevance to human resource development is attempted here.

The concept of empowerment has been used by an increasing number of developmental organizations and activists in the last few years- They talk in terms of empowerment of the poor, of backward communities, of women and other disadvantaged sections of society. It is an effective means to tackle the problem of oppression, exploitation, injustice and other evils existing in our society. So, for development personnel, it is a means as well as an end in itself. People talking in terms of social empowerment refer to the deep-rooted forms of inequality built into the traditional Indian social structure based on caste and gender. These inequalities are present not only in the Hindu religion, but also in other religions. To them, empowerment means changes in the unequal social standing of different castes and sex perpetuated by the deep-rooted ideas of purity and pollution.

Similarly, another aspect of empowerment is political. Democracy, according to the classical definition, is government of the people, by the people and for the people. Though we have had universal adult franchise for the last fifty years; common people feel that their life has hardly been enhanced in any way. The traditional elite sections of society, supported by money and muscle power, occupy all the top political positions till today. Political empowerment in this context means radical changes in the composition of the political class by giving adequate representation to women and persons from tradi-tionally deprived communities.

Empowerment is also talked about in the context of economic deprivation and insecurity, particularly of marginalized, unorganized and other disadvantaged groups and communities. It is human capacity building or enhancement of the economic and social capabilities of communities. Intervention programmes include capacity building through craft training, especially for women, literacy programmes

and the formation of micro-credit groups for the ready availability of credit on easy terms and provision of productive assets at a very subsidized rate.

Social scientists used to list many important functions that community as a social institution performed for its members and also for the larger society. These are political functions like settling disputes, village defence and taxation, socio-economic functions like public works, education, health, social welfare and organized work for public utilities. To the individuals, the community was the basic unit of association, where they formed their lasting relationships and acquired a perspective of life. Industrialization has brought initially the individual and later the family to the urban areas, thus changing the structure of traditional communities and the weakening of their functions, leading gradually to the breakdown of the community as an institution which performed important functions in society. Wars, militancy, communal conflicts, lack of governance and democracy have led to the deterioration of community structures. The emergence of mass organizations to replace communities on account of migration, has resulted in the weakening of primary relations, which were a source of support and meaning to the individual. The emergence of old-age homes, institutional care for children, homes for the homeless, orphanages and homes for the destitute are the fallout ol the deterioration of community structures. Thus, fundamentally, the entire concept of the traditional community management system has been eroded.

Civil society strengthening is nothing but joint action aimed at community mobilization and participation in all affairs directly relevant to the people. In other words, it is empowerment of the powerless so that they actively participate at all levels. Grassroots movements in India have emerged spontaneously to deal with community problems as well as those of a powerful state. Movements led by the rural women in Andhra Pradesh against the liquor lobby, which have been spontaneous outbursts of the women after attending adult education classes, arc examples of real civil society strengthening. This movement involved the entire state, even though there were no organizers for the movement. It forced the state government to rise to the occasion and declare prohibition in the state. The Constitutional Amendment (73rd) Act in the current Panchayati Raj system at the grassroots level added further impetus to the local level governance of civil society matters. Thus, the Panchayati Raj system in India provides a self-governing system of the local community. Many of the community responsibilities such as the maintenance of water resources, sharing of waters and construction of village infrastructure are now part of the panchayat's responsibility. Women's empowerment through thrift and credit groups is another programme which has brought about tangible changes in the number of women's groups. There are increasing numbers of such women's groups visible in our villages and urban slums. The real empowerment of the women can be seen in this programme.

PROJECT MONITORING AND EVALUATION

The implementation phase is the period in which the project is actually conducted and the planned activities are carried out. This also implies that a continuous monitoring is necessary to keep up the quality of the work that is going on, to ensure that the project is heading in the right direction, that progress is made towards the objectives and problems are spotted early. In this phase it is important

regularly to reassess the risks of the projects and to check if the stakeholders remain the same. The results and learning from the monitoring has to be fed back into the project design and adjustments or improvements where necessary have to be made.

In practice nothing will go completely as planned and few plans are carried out within the estimated time. Management need a good flow of believable information to do these two tasks and a large measure of flexibility. Problems will always arise.

Consider how you will respond if- Supplies are held up for at least a month;- You are told that half the workers are reporting faked data; - The Community is angry because they think they are being exploited;- The Community has stopped doing what it promised.

Make your own list of what might go wrong and how you would respond.

MonitoringThe process of change needs continuous monitoring and evaluation. You need to check if you are on the right road or if you have taken a wrong turn. If the results are not what you expected, things may go slowly, people lose motivation and action must be taken. A change process is like a child learning how to walk: falling and getting up again. Do not get discouraged, enjoy the positive outcomes and adapt your strategies on the negative ones. Monitoring is essential in a changing situation. The purpose of monitoring is to find out whether the program and activities are effective, and how strategies need to be adapted to ensure the best possible results. Simply put: we made a plan; now, are we carrying it out, in good time and using the right means, people and approaches?Monitoring is a continuous process for the duration of the project. It is an activity based on data collection. The knowledge and skills required for monitoring are the same as for assessment and analysis.

In fact your monitoring has been planned beforehand by defining indicators and how to collect information on these indicators. It is important that this has been done with all your stakeholders involved. Sometimes the NGO has a clear idea of what is important and a core principle but if a donor thinks differently you may need evidence to convince them. Participatory Impact Assessment (PIA)

Nowadays the focus of NGOs is on Participatory Impact Assessment (PIA), which is an extension of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA). PIA involves the adaptation of participatory tools, combined with more conventional statistical approaches, specifically to measure the impact of humanitarian assistance and development projects on people’s lives. The approach acknowledges local people or project clients as experts by emphasizing the involvement of project participants and community members in assessing project impact and recognizes them as experts to indicate changes. In contrast to many traditional

project monitoring and evaluation approaches, PIA aims to measure the real impact of a project on the lives of the project participants. Most evaluations tend to focus on measuring aspects of project implementation, such as the delivery of inputs and services, the number of water points constructed or the number of people trained.

As far as possible, a PIA should use indicators that are identified by the community or intended project participants. Communities have their own priorities for improving their lives, and their own ways of identifying impact indicators and measuring change. Oftentimes these priorities and indicators are different from those identified by external actors.

Consistent with this, a project level PIA tries to answer the following three key questions: - What changes have there been in the community since the start of the project?- Which of these changes are attributable to the project?- What differences have these changes made to people’s lives?

Regularly updated information is vital in ensuring that programs remain relevant and effective. Regular monitoring allows managers to determine priorities, identify emerging problems, determine the effect of their responses, and guide revisions to their programmes. Regularly updated information means that questions can be asked that have more to do with evaluation – whether, for example the programme is really going to affect the problem addressed. Information derived from continual monitoring of programmes can be used for reviews, evaluations and other purposes.

Monitoring looks complex but should not be. It helps to use a monitoring system adapted to your needs and situation and specified in the preparation phase of the project. Some projects are easier to monitor than others. If you are vaccinating children, you count the kids and calculate the proportion of all children covered and not covered. Changes in attitudes or behaviour are more difficult to monitor, but the use of good indicators from the very beginning will facilitate this process.

Some additional aspects to think about:- Information collected should be directly relevant to the programme – in other words, it should

be useful and acted upon. It should also be documented; action should be taken to make it available as needed to other sectors and agencies, and to the affected population.

- The means of communication used (dissemination methods, language, etc., must be appropriate and accessible for the intended audience. A report to your donor needs to be in an official form. But information provided to your non-literate stakeholders should be in a form they will understand. In some cases you might decide to have a workshop to present the results, discuss the outcomes, and talk about the next steps.

Monitoring often overlaps with evaluation. Some means that can be used for monitoring and evaluation are:

- Discussing and exchanging information with partners and stakeholders;- Writing reports;

- Using computers for analysis (spreadsheets, databases, statistics, graphics, or combined programmes);

- Using diagrams, matrices, graphics, mapping etc;- Using video, photos;- Using observation.

The evaluation phase

Evaluation is often the last part of a project or process but at the same time the beginning of the next phase, extension or new proposal.

Three evaluation moments can be distinguished:- Mid-term often mixed with monitoring and sometimes called an assessment;- Immediately after the completion of the projects;- Some time after the completion of the project.

Staff of the organisation can do an internal evaluation. An independent outside agency can perform an external evaluation, often at the request of the donor. An evaluation can also be a joint one with staff from the organisation and personnel from the outside agency. The organisation itself can also clearly indicate what they think is important to evaluate and should certainly be involved in defining the Terms of Reference. Read again the story of the hospital three pages back. A real participatory evaluation will involve the primary stakeholders as well.

Purposes of evaluationThe purpose of the evaluation can be twofold: to assess the actual results of an activity and/or to assess what has been learnt from the project. A difference can be made in types of evaluation, like process evaluation, where you look at the process during the project and impact evaluation, where you look at the impact of the project on the primary stakeholders. A distinction is also made between formative and summative evaluation. This distinction is related to the perspective from which an evaluation is conducted. Formative stems from the public accountability perspective and summative from the improvement perspective.

The following could be examined during a formative evaluation:- Effectiveness: To what extent have the objectives been achieved? And at what costs? If

objectives were not met, then why? Strategies and action used: Which were the strengths in the strategies/ actions? Which the weak points? Are objectives still valid - or do these need to be adapted? Which changes need to be made in order to reach the objectives? All these questions reflect the project management and planning.

- Efficiency: Are the costs in proportion to the benefits? These costs refer to resources: human resources, time, energy, money and materials.

If, for example, a lot of women/men hours were needed to cultivate the gardens, and fertiliser had to be imported and was extremely costly, the balance between input and output might not be correct.Or suppose a lot of time, effort and money was spent on vegetables but the farmers are making the harvest into alcohol – this project could be a waste of money.

- Impact analysis: What has been the impact on the staff, the organization and the stakeholders? What changes have been brought about by the project? These changes can be the ones desired, but sometimes, unexpected ones occur: A participatory impact analysis can be used to understand the stakeholders’ perspectives.

Example; a Hygiene Education project linked to newly installed pumps and vegetable growing was very concerned with helping women get control of their home situation; they monitored the process of the project and during the end evaluation they used tools drawn from Participatory Impact Analysis. Their findings were that women felt more empowered – but also reported less diarrhoea among the children.The improvement-oriented evaluation could focus on:

- What went well and what not? Why? What improvements are needed in order to be more effective, more efficient or to reach the objective?

- What are the lessons learnt and how can this knowledge be used for future plans or projects? What did you learn from the practices and approaches implemented? Which methods worked well, which did not? Which were the best practices? Which were unsuccessful? Identification of these lessons should help with future planning and could contribute to organizational strengthening or institutional learning. Best practices can be used again and unsuccessful ones eliminated.

Internal evaluation is often improvement-oriented. The practice of evaluating one’s own effort is a natural one: women will look to see if spots have been removed from shirts after washing, a mechanic will check if the motor he repaired is working properly, a carpenter will run his hands over the wood to decide when a piece is smooth. If not, they might need to change their approach, tool or means.

Participatory evaluationParticipatory evaluation is getting more and more attention, but what does it mean? According to the writers of the Participatory Impact Assessment (see above), it is a process through which all the people involved at various levels of a project, engage in ongoing evaluation of the project and its effects. The focus of participatory evaluation is actively to engage those who the project is designed for, in all aspects of the evaluation process - sharing control in planning, undertaking, analysing and applying learning from an evaluation process.

The guide mentions a number of aims of participatory evaluation:- The first and most important aim is to develop and improve a project through learning lessons

all the time and using the lessons to adapt the project according to its specific context;- To build skills and knowledge that empower sustainable action in the future;- To communicate with external and internal stakeholders;- To provide a method of accountability for the project.

The participatory evaluation works from both the improvement-oriented and the accountability perspective. Some of the key principles, or advantages, of participatory evaluation, as mentioned in the guide, are as follows:

- It ensures the involvement of active participants, not just sources of information;- It builds the capacity of local people to gather information, analyse, reflect and take effective

action;- It supports the joint learning of people involved in a project, including those who are involved at

different levels and in different ways; It acts as a catalyst to help people commit to taking more effective action in a project or community.